I know that my Redeemer lives…

Job prophesied this nearly 3000 years before Jesus was born. Jesus did stand on the Earth and He will stand on it again one day soon. Amen

God is still working on you

Trust Him to finish it.

Give thanks!

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.
1 Thessalonians 5:18 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/1th.5.18.KJV

Abide in Jesus

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.
John 15:4 KJV
https://bible.com/bible/1/jhn.15.4.KJV

No God but You, Lord!

Rejection, fear, and uncertainty

As human’s we do not like even ONE of these. From our family or our friends and certainly not from God. But why would we worry about feeling these emotions from God? The main reason that we feel these emotions in our relationship with God is actually because of Satan himself. God has never rejected us. Why should we be afraid of God? He isn’t going to strike us dead if we don’t do something, right? Feeling uncertain about your relationship with Him is also a tactic of Satan. Jesus said that all we had to so was to believe in Him and in the Father Who sent Him to save us from our sins…that’s it! Believe in Jesus and God the Father for your salvation. No hoops to jump through. No certain number of people that you have to tell about Jesus. He did all of the work on the cross in order to pay for your sins and nothing that we try to do can add value to our salvation.

Satan is the instigator and has been since before Adam or the Earth was created. He was a consummate liar then and he has gotten better at it over the thousands of years since then. Satan can make us believe a lie about God or Jesus or any part of the salvation which is freely given by God’s grace through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross.

We don’t have to listen to those suggestions which Satan places in our head and in our mind, but many times we do listen to them. If you look it up and read about God in the Bible, you will see that He may make some people afraid of Him but He only did it because of their hard hearts. They wouldn’t listen to His instructions, His commandments, so He had to get their attention just as He gets our attention at times. He knows that we are hard-headed and stubborn and sometimes it takes more than reading a few scriptures to make us know that He is serious.

For some of us it will take a bit more than reading a scripture to realize what is being said to us. Many times it may take a sickness or a death in the family to really get our attention, but God will use that to His advantage. God loves each of us but He also knows exactly how much it will take to get our attention and to keep it focused on Him. Some people will blame Him and they will move away from Him but that isn’t a surprise to God. He knows exactly who will hear Him and follow Him and who will not. Regardless of our intention to follow Him or not, God still loves us. That is just His nature.

If the love of God is not part of your life…

Everything done in love will edify the Lord!

Lonely in a crowd

There was an article which was asking the question “Why have teenage suicides gone up 76 percent in the past decade?”. One reason is information overload. This is the first generation which has had constant access to the Internet on a device which they can carry in their pocket. Am I blaming the smartphone for this? Yes, actually I am. It is not wholly to blame of course. Parents who use electronic babysitters to calm their children also are part of the problem. So why are teens feeling so left out and lonely? Because they don’t engage and talk to each other anymore.

Have you ever watched a group or even a family in a restaurant lately? Most of the time they aren’t talking to each other. They are all looking at their phones or texting or scrolling through Instagram or Facebook. Technology is to blame for the lack of interaction in our society because it is like a drug. And we start children on this “drug” sometimes before they can even talk! People don’t feel a connection to their family or their friends because of the detached nature of the relationship. You can’t hear uncertainty or fear in a text, there is no way to relate to an emoticon speaking to you.

All of this technology was supposed to help us not enslave us to it to the point of not being able to spell our words and our emotions. Young people use text abbreviations such as BRB rather than spelling the words and they use them in writing papers in English class and wonder why their grade is not higher? English teachers are having to attempt to undo the damage caused by more than a decade of message-speak. Will they ever be able to undo it? Not likely.

God did not intend for us to be slaves to technology but we are in today’s world. In many countries where there isn’t a rampant embrace of technology, Christian faith and Christianity in general is growing. Because of God’s written Word. People are reading it and praising Him because of Who He is and what He has done for them. Technology can help in this of course, but when we depend on technology more than we depend on God, we have become idol worshipers. Even when we make “our god” statements we have made God in our image and reduced Him to a little “g”. Still an idol because He said in the giving of the Ten Commandments, that we should not make a graven image to represent Him or any other created thing to worship.

The Ten Commandments Exodus 20:1-17

(Deuteronomy 5:6-21)

1 And God spake all these words, saying,

2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.

3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me. (This is the first commandment)

4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: 5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; 6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: 10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: 11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

13 Thou shalt not kill.

14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.

15 Thou shalt not steal.

16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

When we turn back to reading the Bible and learning from it, in church or in our homes, then our nation and the world will become the people that God intended for us to be. Pray for your children, teach them from God’s Word, learn from it while you teach them and help them to know that God loves them and has loved them since before they were born. Seek Him while there is time in this life because when this life is over, there are no second chances.